


Not a Winchester

by lilsmartass



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Extended Scene, F/M, Family, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 13:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilsmartass/pseuds/lilsmartass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and John didn’t always get on but Sam thinks he understands him now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Winchester

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All Kripkie  
> Genre: Angst, introspection, Sam POV, some mentions of Wee!Chesters though nothing so glamorous as flashbacks  
> Warnings/Ratings: PG, set during The Song Remains the Same and a blink and you’ll miss it mention of Dark Side of the Moon even though, I appreciate that for Sam and Dean that hasn’t happened yet.

**Not A Winchester**

So everyone knows Sam and John didn’t exactly get along. Really, everyone knows. Sam’s not entirely sure how, since the hunting community is full of people who won’t even tell you the time unless they’re doubly, triply certain of who (and what) you are, and John and Dean, the only ones with any _right_ to know, are amongst those who play their cards closest to their chest, but somehow everyone does. My-dad-and-I-don’t-really-get-along had been something he could say at Stanford to explain his lack of past and his unwillingness to discuss it. But, as he had gotten older, things had changed. Things he had never been able to explain it fully, even to himself.

Because dad loved them. Sam had hated the man for so long; longer than he had idolised him as the hero of his childhood, longer than he had understood him as a man. But he had loved them. Dad had done everything, always to protect them. He’d made bad decisions, he’d ruined their childhoods, but not with abuse or indifference, instead with careless, thoughtless mistakes because he was an adult and didn’t realise how important little things were to a child.

When he had been younger, after he had learned about monsters, after he had started training, after the glamour of being a superhero who slew creatures in the night had worn off, after dad’s armour had become tarnished and lost its shine, Sam had craved normal. Well, to begin with, he’d craved stability. Why couldn’t he hunt things from a home base and have a day job like Uncle Bobby? Or Pastor Jim? Later, he would realise that dad’s outright rejection of such an idea stemmed from sheer fear that away from him, out of his sight, Sam would be vulnerable to predators. Like every teenager in the history of the world, except perhaps Dean, Sam had seen his dad’s failure to view his plan as the greatest plan anyone had ever come up with as a sign of the man’s incompetence and rejected everything he stood for. And thus, Sam Winchester made the transition from craving stability to craving _normal_. But the thing he had never told anyone, the thing that, even now, he couldn’t admit to himself, was that it had never worked.

Their childhood had been a disaster, a train wreck of missed birthdays and failed tests due to changing schools mid-semester. He and Dean had had more near death experiences before they were fifteen than most kids had vacations. Sam had spent ten years of his life hating his dad, because it was easier than despising himself because, put in a foul mood by Sam’s questions and arguments, John would take his fury out on Dean with a harsh comment that Dean would take much too seriously and obsess about for weeks. And none of that had changed the fact that Sam had used to lie awake for hours at Stanford trying to reconcile what he knew with what he wanted. He wanted normal, he wanted Jess, he wanted two point four children and a white picket fence in suburbia, but how could he? He knew what was out there. It was the duty of every father to protect their children, to teach them what they would need to survive in the big bad world, and in his case, that, by definition, included teaching them to hunt. To do anything less was to fail to prepare them for what he knew from bitter experience could come out of their closet and eat them.

So John had ruined their childhoods? So what? They had survived them. Yes OK, Dean might not appreciate it if he knew but one of Sam’s happiest memories was having thanksgiving with someone else’s family. It didn’t change the fact that there were good, even great, memories of his own family too. There was the day dad had bought them a giant batman birthday cake and shoved a ton of candles on it for them to share because “I made a butt load at poker last night and when it’s your actual birthdays Murphy’s Law says we’ll need the cash for ammo so we’ll have a party now.” They’d had cake for dinner and Sam had never laughed so hard in his life. There had been hundreds of moments, some small and some misguided, but hundreds of moments nevertheless which proved that dad had tried. The moments only an adult saw and understood, but even as a child he had sensed and known he was loved. Loved enough to have tantrum after tantrum, to throw everything important to dad back in the man’s face and know he had nothing to fear. He had been angry, furious, when John had said if you go don’t come back, but it had been pride which kept him away. He was too proud and too stubborn to admit that he was homesick and just wanted to call, he’d never had to fear that his dad would stick to his words and send him away. The man had nearly shot, and had come to blows, with most of the people they had considered friends, many of them more than once, but Sam had pushed harder than any of those men ever had, in full knowledge of his own impunity to John’s fists.

It took the eyes of an adult to see that dad had just done what he had had to do. He had done it _badly_ but it could have been worse. It could have been so so much worse. John Winchester knew monsters were out there, monsters which had specifically targeted his son. It was only natural he had done everything he could to protect them and to prepare them.

Which is why Sam feels something of himself break and die inside when he realises all his mother wants is a normal life. She was raised a hunter, but she hasn’t told John what being with her might cost. She wants to have...hell, is about to have, children, but she plans to keep them in the dark and not make sure that they always carry salt and holy water and know an exorcism or two. She wanted a normal life and, as beautiful as she is, as sacred as she has always been to their broken family, Sam judges her for it because she could never have had one without risking himself and Dean. He judges her for being willing to do so, because, of all the mistakes John Winchester made, knowingly risking his sons was not one of them. He would never have put a desire of his ahead of them.

Mary Campbell had been raised a hunter. She was just like them and yet...a demon had gotten into his nursery. There had been no salt lines, no ward, and no protections because that wasn’t _normal_ enough. It hadn’t been normal at Stanford either, but Sam had still done it, invisible markers, lines glued down and carpets laid on top, ways of hiding it from his friends who wouldn’t have understood, but unable to imagine letting someone he cared about as much as he did Jess, sleep in an unprotected room.

It has taken years and the eyes of an adult to see it but Sam understands John now. He had never had any choice in what he did, never. He could never have let them grow up both normal and protected, and to put normal before making certain that your family was as safe as you can make them is not the Winchester way. The thing Sam can never ever put into words even inside his own head, is that it’s never been more obvious that his mother was born a Campbell.    


End file.
